Hello.

My name is Dave Baiocchi (bye-OH-key — rhymes with karaoke). I created Imaginative Futures (IF) to help clients tackle their toughest innovation challenges.

I started my career as an engineer, and my training gave me an appreciation for how to build things that work. After a PhD and a few years at a national lab, I got good at identifying the problems behind problems and designing elegant solutions (some of which are still circling around us up in space).

After doing science at the lab, I got really interested in science policy and joined the RAND Corporation in 2008. While I was there, I worked with senior leaders across various Federal agencies where we tackled everything from reshaping the Army’s deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan to helping FEMA strategize the emergency response needed if a large asteroid were to collide with Earth.

While I was at RAND, I observed that it wasn’t necessarily the quality of the research that made something impactful: It was the quality of the research communication.   

The most effective communication is one that creates a convincing narrative, and one of the best ways to tell a story is visually.  There’s a reason a toddler only goes for the picture books, or adults read the New Yorker’s cartoons first. A figure that conveys the scope of the problem or presents an elegant solution can be 10x more persuasive than a 500-page policy planning document.

After a decade at RAND, I was ready for a new challenge, and I started looking for a place that worked at the intersection of objective research, helping businesses succeed, and superb storytelling. I spent two years looking for it, but I came up empty, so I decided to create it myself.  And that’s Imaginative Futures. 

IF is a place where objective research is paired with effective thought-provoking narration. It’s made up of a team of equal parts visual artists and social and physical scientists.  I’ve found that you can do a lot of interesting things when you have this blend of creative and analytical minds. 

The future has no shortage of complex problems and we’re going to need new innovative teams to solve them.